Alexander Brose was confirmed yesterday, after a probationary year, as President and CEO of the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto. He greeted the appointment by issuing a video of himself singing ‘A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square’.
Watch here.
The Seattle Symphony, whose last music director stormed out two years ago in a flurry of emails, has found someone to take over next year.
The new music director will be Xian Zhang, 51, music director of the inconspicuous New Jersey Symphony for the past nine seasons. She gets a five-year contract in Seattle, where the potential is greater than New Jersey.
From the PR guff:
“Today we are witnessing history being made with the appointment of Xian Zhang as the Music Director of the Seattle Symphony,” said Seattle Symphony President & CEO Krishna Thiagarajan. “Her passionate musicianship is inspiring, her technique is clear and precise and the resulting performances captivate our audiences in heart and soul. Xian was among the first conductors to return to the stage with our orchestra during the COVID-19 pandemic. Since then, she has forged strong bonds here in Seattle. In fact, her concerts rank among the highest-attended performances since audiences have returned to Benaroya Hall. As Seattle has grown into an important world city and gateway to the Pacific, Xian’s diverse expertise across Asian, Oceanian, European and American orchestras and music schools — from Beijing to New York, Melbourne to Milan — makes her the perfect choice to lead the orchestra in this new era. I am excited by the possibilities and personally could not be happier to gain such a wonderful colleague for our organization. I want to thank the Seattle Symphony search committee, musicians, staff and audiences, who all played a crucial role in this process, a we welcome Xian and her family to the Pacific Northwest. What seemed like a dream a few months ago has now become a reality. Welcome, Xian Zhang!”
Opéra national de Paris makes its Slippedisc and OperaVision debut with Gaspare Spontini’s La Vestale, a rarely performed opera that was triumphantly received when it premiered on this very stage in 1807. Stage director Lydia Steier explores the themes of religious extremism and militaristic zeal: can love have any hope of surviving between these two ruthless extremes? Conductor Bertrand de Billy leads the Orchestra of the Paris Opera and a first-rate cast, including Elza van den Heever as Julia, Michael Spyres as her beloved Licinius, and Eve-Maud Hubeaux as the Grande Vestale.
The Plot: priestess Julia watches over the eternal flame of the goddess Vesta. While the Great Vestal condemns to death every virgin who breaks her vow of chastity, Julia is delighted to be reunited with Licinius, who has returned from war as a victorious Roman general. One night, as the two lovers swear their love before the temple altar, the eternal flame goes out…
Subtitles in French and English.
Streamed on 6th September 2024 at 1900 CET / 1800 London / 1300 New York
An outstanding organist on the staff of Eton College has been banned from teaching for life after searches for ‘gay little boys’ were found on his computer. David Goode, 52, has been organist-in-residence at Christ Church Oxford and the First Congregational Church of Los Angeles.
He was found guilty of professional misconduct after Eton’s monitoring system found inappropriate searches on his computer.
Goode was a music master at Eton from 2005 to 2022, and a housemaster from 2016.
Itzhak and Toby Perlman have relisted their Upper West Side townhouse for sale at a considerably reduced price.
Last put up for sale for $17.5 million in March 2022, the pad if now going for just $11.9 million.
At 8,000 square feet, the property includes five or six bedrooms, six fireplaces, five bathrooms, four powder rooms and an indoor pool.
For sale via Richard Steinberg at Compass.
The accounts are in for the fiscal year ending August 2023, and here are the top earners:
Music director Van Zweden (via Bajada Productions) … $1,525,711
Executive director Deborah Borda … $1,317,344 plus $400,000 bonus
Incoming CEO Gary Ginstling … $117,262 plus $55,000 bonus
Concertmaster Frank Huang … $361,713 plus $548,139 in bonuses
Principal oboe Liang Wang (pictured) … $253,524 plus $326,520
Principal clarinet Anthony McGill $394,715.
Notes to the accounts:
Van Zweden earned a huge parallel salary at the Hong Kong Philharmonic and was guest conducting energetically to secure another post.
Ginstling quit in the middle of his second year.
Wang was suspended amid sexual allegations.
Search slippedisc.com for more details.
The apparently departing music director has gone to great lengths to reassure the West Coast that, whatever happens in New York, home stays home. From an interview with Mark Swed of the LA Times:
“I was talking to a friend yesterday,” Dudamel told me, “and I said, ‘L.A. is home.’ I am going to New York, of course, but L.A. is home.”
In his first dozen years as music director of the L.A. Phil, he happily cruised L.A. in his Aston Martin convertible, delighting in its diversity of neighborhoods. He knows all the good restaurants. He has many Angeleno friends from many walks of life. He loves Hollywood and movies. Our climate reminds him of Caracas. His son was born here, and he learned L.A. as a father….
“It’s not like I have a relation with the orchestra and then say goodbye,” he said. “No, no, no. This is something that we have been building for 15 years.” And he has no intention of it not continuing well into the future.
“There has been an evolution, and maybe there can now be a space for creating new things. Of course, I am wishing that what is the best orchestra will find the best decision for a music director.”…
To that end, he is already making post-music director plans for L.A. in 2027 and 2028. He wants to return four weeks a year. including a week at the Bowl. He also has proposed joint projects between the L.A. Phil and the New York Philharmonic, just as he has united YOLA with young players around the world, creating a giant international family of future musicians.
Who? Caspar David Friedrich (5 September 1774 – 7 May 1840) was a 19th-century German Romantic landscape painter, generally considered the most important German artist of his generation.
He is best known for his mid-period allegorical landscapes which typically feature contemplative figures silhouetted against night skies, morning mists, barren trees or Gothic or megalithic ruins. His primary interest as an artist was the contemplation of nature, and his often symbolic and anti-classical work seeks to convey a subjective, emotional response to the natural world.
Friedrich’s paintings characteristically set a human presence in diminished perspective amid expansive landscapes, reducing the figures to a scale that, according to the art historian Christopher John Murray, directs “the viewer’s gaze towards their metaphysical dimension”.
He was inspired by the Sturm und Drang movement and represented a midpoint between the dramatic intensity and expressive manner of the budding Romantic aesthetic and the waning neo-classical ideal. Among his influences were such sources as the Icelandic legend of Edda, and the poems of Ossian and Norse mythology.
No sooner has the Metropolitan Opera rolled out plans for a new Wagner Ring than the Dallas Symphony announces concert performances of all four operas (Oct 13, 15, 17, 20), as well as standalone Siegfried and Götterdämmerung (Oct 5 & 8). It is supposedly the first concert Ring cycle by any US orchestra in recent history.
The conductor is Fabio Luisi, who was passed over eight years ago as music director by the Met.
Casting includes Lise Lindstrom (Brünnhilde), Sara Jakubiak (Sieglinde), Deniz Uzun (Fricka), Daniel Johansson (Siegfried), Mark Delavan (Wotan) and Tómas Tómasson (Alberich). The staging director will be Alberto Triola.
The ever-popular Michael Murray died last week at the age of 81.
A student of Marcel Dupré, whose biography he would write, Murray was organist of St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Columbus, Ohio, for 31 years. He made numerous best-selling recordings on the Telarc label, notably of Bach, Franck and Saint-Saëns.
He was also the biographer of the publisher and philosopher Jacques Barzun. Murray retired just over ten years ago.
The Russian-Austrian diva has been seen this week in Amsterdam in the company of her new beau, the Hungarian-Romanian bass Alexander Köpeczi. The pair have been friends since April when they sang together in La Gioconda in Naples.
Netrebko’s recently announced divorce from Yusif Eyvazov has enabled them to get much closer, friends say.
Köpeczi has just made his debut at Dutch National Opera in Rigoletto (pictured). Netrebko is off to a debut of her own, in Bucharest tomorrow, singing arias with her ex.
Happy days.
With Ryanair, it’s almost as if they go to work each day wondering how to inflict more distress on their passengers.
This just in from the violinist Esther Abrami:
Today I was refused boarding on a Ryanair flight with my 200 years old violin today. On my way to Berlin, departing from Marseille to record my third album with @sonyclassical, this is the first time I have experienced such rudeness and public humiliation.
Just before boarding the flight I was stopped and told I could not board on with my violin. I offered to pay whatever it would cost to take it with me, they refused. I offered to buy an extra seat, they said the flight was closed already and I could not buy an extra seat anymore (despite the flight not being full).
They said the only option was to check it in with the LUGGAGES or just leave at the airport (!!).
I explained the price and the fragility of the violin.
I begged them, explaining I was recording this very same day for my album, telling that I had flown an incredible number of times with this company and never experienced this.
It came to the point where I even offered to take my violin out of the case, keeping its fabric protection and just carry it by hand and keeping it on me during the whole flight whilst they put the case in the cargo.
They made me open my case on the floor, put the violin in the place to measure suitcases. The requirements for the cabin luggage -which I had paid for already- is a length of 55cm. My violin measures 56cm, it fitted diagonally, and otherwise was 1cm over. Even this was refused.
And yet, I still feel incredibly fortunate that I could book a last minute ticket on an other flight, with an other company, on the same day. Not every musician can have this opportunity.
Missing a flight often means losing a vital work opportunity, whether it’s a gig, a recording session, or an important meeting.
In an industry where every opportunity counts, such an incident can have a ripple effect, impacting reputation and future prospects. This is simply inacceptable.
